According to Adam Trimingham (The Argus, February 12), Brighton and Hove’s proposed i360 viewing tower will pose very little financial risk to taxpayers because Brighton and Hove City council will borrow the millions of pounds required at one rate and lend it to the developers at a higher one.

In fact Adam believes the net result will be an income to the council of more than £1 million a year once up and running.

Adam needs to take off his rose-tinted glasses and look at the problems that surrounded the construction of the Spinnaker Tower just along the coast in Portsmouth.

That project was due to open in 1999 but the finish date slipped back six years and only got going in 2005 after repeated delays and extra funding requests from the developers.

Taxpayers were assured that their money would not be funding the tower but Portsmouth City Council eventually had to contribute no less than £11.1 million towards its construction, which went well over budget and finally cost £35.6 million.

A large chunk of that money was wasted as the builders couldn’t get the external lift to function properly and, in the end, it had to be scrapped.

There was much controversy over the contract with the builders which, at one point, would have cost the council more to cancel than to complete.

However, if Adam can give assurances that the i360 will not exceed its budget (unlike the Spinnaker Tower), will actually work properly (unlike the Spinnaker Tower) and won’t cost the taxpayer a penny (unlike the Spinnaker Tower), perhaps it should go ahead.

Unless, of course, the developers either pull out or go bust.

Eric Waters, Ingleside Crescent, Lancing

In the late 1970s our council made the decision not to accept ownership of the West Pier for £1. This error of judgement led to the slow decline of a key area of the seafront, visited by millions of people each year.

With more of the pier falling into the sea, many people are expressing their dismay at the situation, yet we are within a hair’s breadth of a similar, momentous decision by the council in early March.

The West Pier Trust charity has been working tirelessly for years to put together the i360 project. It would bring jobs, tourism and regeneration to the city but it all rests on the council’s decision next month to approve a loan from the Public Sector Loans Board, costing the council nothing but bringing them income of £1 million per year.

Politics seems to have muddied an otherwise clear choice.

Should the council vote against the project, it will collapse and this section of the seafront will stay dilapidated for the foreseeable future.

Paul Mendlesohn, Brighton

It is imperative that taxpayers in Brighton and Hove form an organisation to stop the Greens’ £36 million loan to build an impractical and futile i360 tower, with a 180-degree view of the sea, where very little of interest takes place.

Never in all the years of local government has Brighton and Hove been served so shamefully.

Roy Hilliard, Old Shoreham Road, Portslade

At last, the voice of reason: Adam Trimingham’s article should be nailed to the door of the council chamber and that of any ill-informed correspondents who, predictably, arrive at the wrong answer because they haven’t bothered to read the question.

Support for the i360 provides an opportunity for the council to reject weak compromise and demonstrate that, particularly in difficult times, it is capable of transcending mediocrity and providing the leadership and vision we all expect.

John Wells-Thorpe, Varndean Drive, Brighton